“The X-Ray Waiting Room in the Hospital” by author Randall Jarrell thrusts us into his “big shoes and wrinkled socks,” and one of those “much-laundered smocks” that all the patients wear. Jarrell laments “[t]hese new, plain, mean / Days of pain and care…” and that “routine / Misery has made us into cases.” He describes the “machine” that each smocked patient suffers in, and the reader gets the sense that Jarrell is referring to more than just the mechanics of the x-ray, but also the greater “machine” that is medicine.
Jarrell was an American poet and critic who lived in the mid 20th century but his commentary on the patient’s experience of modern medicine still rings true. Jarrell wants each “nurse and doctor who goes by” to acknowledge him and each patient as an individual, but instead finds that “we are indistinguishable.”
Jarrell concludes that instead of trying to “make friends” with the medical professionals and get them to recognize his individuality, “It is better to lie upon a table, / A dye in my spine.”
Writing Prompt: As a patient, have you ever felt “indistinguishable” from other patients to your medical provider? If you’re a medical professional, do you agree with Jarrell’s assertion that “this routine / Misery has made [patients] into cases?” Can you think of a time when a patient has become merely a case, to you or a colleague? What are the consequences of this, to both the patient and they physician? How can we help doctors and nurses to see patients as individuals again? Write for 10 minutes.